Lessons From Our ANCESTORS

Most of us, as modern people, come from an ancestral lineage where our connection to the earth was severed. Right? That. The colonialism, capitalism, you name it. But there was a time in our ancestral lineage history where our spiritual connection to place was cut. My last name is Corcoran. Right. I come from County Cork, Ireland. My paternal lineage. Right. That's five generations back. Those are my people. Those are my ancestors. There was a spiritual connection to that place. We talked about localization of spirituality. That's my ancestral connection. I don't have Native American, you know, blood in me. And so what was it? You know, what was the bomb? This is kind of pulling from the quest, you know, what was the bomb that went off in my lineage that forced my ancestors to leave this sacred connection that we're now talking about, working so hard to reestablish, to reclaim. That was the potato famine in Ireland.

Sure.

And I've studied this, I've looked back. What was going on back then? Well, the blight came, the potatoes went bad. And it wasn't that. There wasn't other food. The Irish people were growing lots of food, but they were under the tyranny of the English, who were completely just brutalizing and traumatizing them, taking all of their food, sending it back to England so that all that was left for the Irish at the time were the potatoes. So when those potatoes, that blight hit, that was it.

I mean, it was death.

It was like, either leave your spiritual homeland or die. What would you have picked? Of course they left. Of course they came to the U.S. that was the only hope we had. This quote that Mark and I work with. The only reason a person leaves home is if the home is the mouth of a shark.

That's right.

The only reason a person leaves home is if home is the mouth of a shark. That was it. It was either stay and die or go and live so that their future generations at the time, me today, could have a chance. Right. So. And this is why I say the quests we lead are not traditional Native American. Right. These quests are adapted for modern people in modern time. Do we draw from traditional, universal cultural points? Yes. You know, is there wisdom there? Of course. And do we incorporate a modern understanding of the psyche and the human, the whole human being? Yes. But the spiritual basis for the work we do, the work I do, is that I want people to make the connection that you made. I want people to get that at some point in their history, their ancestry, a bomb went off and they lost that connection that did used to live in their Beings and their ancestors. Beings. Right. And that means grief, like to actually sit with that is an incredibly, incredibly grief filled experience. That's like the sin of our times and even before our times, that maybe through feeling that grief of that tremendous, tremendous loss, you know, back when people were still connected to the earth and their souls and themselves, maybe through experiencing the fullness of that grief, we can have a chance of reestablishing that. So it's not about, I want to go out to the Lakota or I want to go to the Navajo, or I want to go to this tribe or that tribe and take their ceremonies, and that's going to fill the hole. That's a losing approach. It's not going to work. And it's also not respectful in most cases. I mean, that's cultural appropriation. The approach is, what is my inherent connection to this Earth and how do I go about re establishing that spiritual connection?

There's so much wisdom in the grief that we forget about because the grief can be so overpowering to our nervous system. And one of the things that was really, really deep for me on the quest was what grief am I not allowing myself to feel? What sadness am I not allowing myself to feel?

And.

And I connected with my grandfather in such a deep way out there. Obviously, it's the. I've shared with you, but I'll just share quickly. Like it's. The middle name of my child is Morrow because that's my grandfather's first name. And so I want to honor the best that he possibly could, the way he provided for our family, the pain that he went through his parents coming over from Sicily on a boat. Can you imagine, can you guys imagine to what Tim is speaking about? Having to let go of your home, your sheep, your farm, your wine, everything. Burn it to the ground because of the tyranny that they were experiencing in.

Sicily, Generations of ancestral connection to that.

Place, and then come to Ellis island and get a stamp and be like, well, here's your name. I mean, to be treated like cattle.

Yeah.

And I was feeling that out there for him, and I was just feeling so grateful. So grateful.

Yeah.

For what he went through.

Yeah.

And the way that he left, what he left for our family, I mean, it just. It brings tears to my eyes right now just to think about it. And so that's the honoring that I'm doing in my life with my son is. Is Nova is the brightest star in the universe. That's right. The supernova.

That's right.

The brightest thing we'll ever see. And I think all the. The children that are coming in right now for parents that are on a path of spirituality or just growth, they're coming in to change some things.

Yes.

So it's an honoring of the future generations. It's an honoring of my grandfather in the past, but it's also one of the times that I've really been able to touch that deep level of sadness for what he went through.

Yeah.

Have you experienced that yourself? And then can you talk about the healing mechanism that happens when we honor the grief and honor the wisdom of the sadness?

So when we do start to open up and we allow ourselves the opportunity, you know, to feel our feelings, what tends to come up first for most people is issues of trauma from their own personal life history. Right. Like for me, it was some abuse as a young kid and then bullying, and then my parents divorce. Those were like the three heavyweight traumas I had to contend with that took me some years to, you know, begin to get on the other side of. And for. And this. This is just a generality. You know, there are exceptions to this, but for most people, when we come to the other side of that, and I'm not saying that we can ever fully. We can't change the past, but we can change our relationship to it and we can change our inner narrative and the impact of that on us. Someone once said regarding trauma that the worst part of trauma is not the trauma itself, but how we hold onto it and internalize it and then continue to traumatize ourselves. We adopt an inner abuser, an inner oppressor, you know, unconsciously, that continues to traumatize ourselves over and over so we can get to the other side of that. And that kind of healing work happens as you experienced and many others in a quest and. Or in a therapy room or in a men's group or in a women's group. There's lots of different places where that can unfold. But when we do begin to get to the other side of that. Right. And it doesn't. I like to speak about it as the transition from a wound driven life to a vision driven life. Right. First we've got to catch up with ourselves. We got to address all that stuff that we're not at peace within ourselves, then we can really put our energy towards that bigger vision. But when that happens and we see this more and more, then a doorway opens up to the ancestral grief, you know, to the grief. What happens to the grief my dad or granddad or great granddad had and didn't address does that just go away? No, we know this from epigenics. That shit sticks around. And whatever my ancestors didn't deal with, I'm going to have to deal with. You know, I mean, I don't have to. I could choose to pass it on unconsciously.

You could, which is what a lot of people do. And I'm not saying that to belittle them. It's just the awareness of what is like. A lot of people choose to not deal with it. Right. And that's. That's okay on some level.

Yeah. But if we're going to, you know, be serving a greater vision for the future.

Right.

Then it is our responsibility to do so.